Figure 1.

Schematic of the mammalian Hippo signaling pathway. The Hippo pathway is an evolutionary conserved cellular pathway that coordinately regulates cell proliferation and apoptosis. Merlin has been proposed to interact with unknown membrane proteins and transduce a signal that stimulates the phosphorylation of LATS1/2 by the serine/threonine kinases MST1/2 that interact with hWW45. LATS1/2 inhibits the transcriptional coactivator YAP resulting in suppressed expression of downstream target genes such as cyclins that are involved in cell growth and proliferation.